small pots, big plants, why?

When I go to homedepot, walmart nurseries, they sell some big plants in tiny pots. They look so easy to grow, but once I bought them home, they just stop growing.

Did those people actually grow those big plants in those tiny pots originally?

And in the soil, I can always see those white tiny round balls, i suppose that they are fertilizers. what are they called?

Hi Youngman, the simple answer is yes, they do grow them in those small pots, the growers sometimes treat the plants so they will not grow too big for the pot size or they would have to spend even more time and money moving them up pot sizes before they go to the store, that would more than likely mean we the public would have to pay even more for the plants if in larger pots. some plants flower better when their roots are more restricted in smaller pots too. best thing to do when you buy plants that you feel are too large for their pots is to knock it out from the pot by turning it upside down with your fingers spread over the soil so the plant dont hit the floor, and gently but firmly tap the bottom of the pot and the plant should drop out, this way you can check the roots to see if they are over crowding the pot/soil, if they are, then either move it to a larger pot with some fresh soil or into the garden if it was to be planted out, but if the roots are growing around in circles in tight soil, you would be best to gently loosen some of the roots by teasing them out, this way the wont continue to continue circling the soil in the new pot, give it a good drink also as they are normally kept on the drier side for sale. The white balls you talked of are added to help drainage and lets air into the soil, it is called perlite here but not sure what you call it in CA, yellow balls are slow release feeds added also sometimes. Hope this helps you out a bit, good luck. WeeNel.

That is very intersting to know! i always assumed that those white balls are fertilizer. I see them almost in every cheap plants' pots, are they really that important?

And how come those growers are able to grow those plants so big in those tiny pots? I have bought a few before, i just water them regularly, they never grow much at all. What are the growers doing, so that those plants grow like crazy in such tiny pots?

Once the plants reach a certain size and their roots have completely filled up the pot, they're not going to grow anymore until you get them in a bigger pot. And when you pot it up, you need to untangle/loosen up the roots or else the roots will keep going in a circle and the plant won't realize it's in a bigger pot and can grow some more, that could be why they don't seem to grow anymore once you buy them.

So can someone tell me, how those commercial growers can produce giant plants in tiny plastic pots? Do they use special fertilizers?

they grow them in climate controlled areas and use lots of fertilizer.

ecrane, you are a treasure on Dave's, but the idea that roots that are growing in a circle (because they have no where else to go in a crowded pot) will continue to grow in a circle after they are potted up and have room to grow outward is a commonly held myth. It's the nature of the growing tips to grow AWAY from the root ball, and new roots will do that. Of course, the old roots that are in a ball won't "straighten out," but the new roots will grow more or less perpendicular to the root ball. While it's not a bad idea to break up a circle of crowded roots, the plant will be just fine if it's not done. I'm talking mainly about annuals and small perennials.

Trees and shrubs are a different story. If there are tree roots circling the root ball, in time those can grow so large in diameter that they can choke the tree just underneath the surface of the soil. Circled roots in this situation are best cut with a utility knife. This sets the tree back, but if the top is pruned proportionately it will recover. New tree roots will grow out laterally, but as I said earlier, the old ones won't straighten themselves out.

When we first moved into our house many years ago, there were three small crabs in the side yard the previous owners had planted. They looked so ugly and sickly that after three or four years of no growth or bloom , I got disgusted and dug them up. I found the roots were a tight, tangled mess, stlll in the shape of the container they came in years before. They would have been nice trees by now if the previous owners had planted them right by trimming or coaxing the roots a bit.

I've seen that happen as well. Maybe it's not as much of a problem in a container where you're using nice potting mix that the roots can grow out into more easily, but in the ground particularly if you have clay soil it can definitely happen.

i've seen small perennials that were planted rootbound and just like the trees and shrubs, they stayed just as they were. i can't go with the "myth" theory except maybe for really aggressive plants.

I have planted thousands of annuals that were in 4 inch pots. A good number of them were quite rootbound- the roots were "a tangle" and circling the plastic pot. I don't mess with the compacted roots. I just go ahead with the planting. When the season was over and time came to dispose of them, almost all had developed a full root system and the containers were full of roots.

I've also watched "landscapers" plant many container grown trees. Many times these have the circled roots we are talking about. Although it's a good practice to make several vertical cuts on the root ball with a heavy-duty utility knife, these workers are usually in a hurry, and often are not trained very well, and most of the time they skip that step. The majority of the trees go on to develop into nice specimens. This is in heavy black clay soil with limestone only 18 inches or less beneath the clay.

Roots do not grow in a circle around the root ball unless they are in a container and are unable to grow out away from the root ball.

Since several people here have observed it happening, it seems there are at least some situations in which it can happen, and there are references out there which also share this sort of information--here are some examples but there's plenty more out there too, so while I agree it's not something that's going to happen all the time, I don't think it falls into the myth category.

http://jeffreycaldwell.blogspot.com/2005/03/rootbound-plants.html
http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/houseplant/houseplant.html
http://www.northscaping.com/InfoZone/FS-0099/FS-0099.shtml
http://davesgarden.com/guides/terms/go/751/
http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/circlecutting.html
http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/commonrootdefects.html
http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/compacted.html
http://www.urbanforestrysouth.org/resources/library/handling-and-planting-container-grown-trees/file

Regardless of what people have observed though, I think we can all agree that particularly for things like trees and shrubs that you plan to keep for a number of years, the best practice is to do something to untangle/spread out the roots from a rootbound plant before you plant it.

I have seen both i the greenhouse and in clients yards that some perennial with choke themselves out if root bound and the roots not cut. Now I have seen in a house that I bought years ago, that the old owners had planted 10 years ealier boxwoods and manhattens and they were dead. When i pulled them up they were just a circle of roots. Now, trees and bushes. If you don't encourage new root growth by cutting the old ones , which stimulates a hromone within the plants to seal off those roots and start new roots then you run a good chance of the roots growing around themselves in certain conditions like heavy clay soils. When the soil around these roots makes it impossible or harder for the roots to grow out laterally their going to grow the easiest way. I have seen 55 year old boxwwods pulled up and the burlap is still intact and the roots fought to grow up and out. I have transplanted magnolias where the wire basket was left intact, not cut, and the roots couldn't grow out well and what a mess, I got a grwat picture of it too. So, overall, sometimes theres myths and sometimes there are circumstances that do cause this and boy does my typing suck today.

when we bought a home up here 4 years ago, there was a row of indian hawthorne along the back porch. the woman who owned the home was the original owner. i asked her if the hawthorne had been planted recently as they were small and her comment was that no, they had been put in about 10 years prior. after we moved in, i was curious so i got out my shovel. remember we are almost solid sand here in some parts and especially around foundations of homes because it's fill. well, i need not have bothered with a shovel and in fact pulled them all out by hand. they looked like they were still in their original 1 gallon containers! the only thing that kept them alive was the moist sand.

i can't comment on annuals because i don't usually mess with them but when i do, i always scratch them up and take a claw and untangle the bottom.

Anecdotal evidence can be used to justify just about any argument. I like the example of the FIFTY FIVE year old boxwoods that were still contained in the burlap in which they were wrapped. I'm not sure what that has to do with the issue under discussion here, but that speaks for the tenacity of boxwoods. Some here have mentioned heavy clay soils. Trees have to grow in the soil where they are planted (or exist in nature). The roots for a mature large variety of oak can extend for hundreds of feet. There are oaks that do quite well in mucky black clay soil. The roots manage somehow.
Back to what I originally said, and which I stand by: The roots of container grown plants often fill the containers, and the roots begin to grow around and around themselves after they reach the barrier of the sides of the container and cannot grow outward any longer. If such plants are replanted in a larger container, or in the ground, the root tips WILL NOT continue to "circle."
They will extend outward from the root ball. Nature equips them with the tendency to do this in order to increase the amount of roots spread over the largest area possible in order to support the plant, but mostly to enable it to take up as much water as possible when water is available.
The mass of roots formed while the plant was restricted by the container remains, but becomes less and less significant as the plant grows and the normal root system develops.

The references I posted weren't just anecdotal evidence, they were primarily from universities, master gardener programs, etc so if there was no truth to this whatsoever I don't think they'd be spreading myths. And when enough people have the same experience I think that has to count for something too. Everyone's had different experiences though and gardening is rarely black and white, so in my opinion the real thing for people to think about is why take a chance. Yes, you can undoubtedly plant rootbound things as-is and many times they may develop just fine, but if there's even the tiniest chance you could have problems or the plant could be a little less healthy as a result, why wouldn't you take the extra couple of minutes to try and loosen the roots a bit to give the plant a better chance (particularly if it's a tree/shrub/perennial that you're hoping to have around for many years). There's really nothing to lose besides a couple minutes of your time.

I'm sorry Dp but i don't totally agree with you. NAture is one thing. The plant grows in it's natural environment and is conditioned form the beginning to the area around it. When we take plants and introduce them into a new envionment we change a lot of things one being their ability to grow the way they should. Now, there are a lot of plants that you could plant upside down and they wouldn't care but others are sensitive to different things. So, to say that this is not all possible is incorrect. I did a summer intership at my college's greenhouse and one of the theories we tested was the rooting ability of plants in different mediums and how it effected the rooting system. From that 15 week study I can disagree with you. And honestly I forgot where I was going with the boxwood. Sorry

i'm not trying to justify anything. i'm just stating a fact as i experienced it. especially here in the beginner's forum, i think it's important to heed what ecrane just posted. why get off to a bad start if you don't have to? the hawthornes i mentioned were a complete mass of circled roots and only a couple of "hair or feeder" roots the size of a cobweb had made any attempt to venture outward.

Would someone please quote back to me anything I've said that advocates replanting container-started plants WITHOUT loosening up the roots if they are in a tight mass? I initially responded to a statement made here that roots that are circling the insides of a container will continue to grow around and around when a plant is replanted in a larger container or in the ground. They do not. Once they have the chance, they grow outward. That is the "myth" I referred to. Some of you good people have extrapolated what I said into the idea that I ADVOCATE planting trees and shrubs without roughing up a tight root ball. If you would take comments in the context in which they are made and not pick out a sentence or a fragment and make assumptions from that, misunderstandings could be avoided.
trackinsand, did it ever occur to you that a number of other factors could have contributed to the failure of these infamous hawthornes to thrive? Plants in sand can dry out very quickly. It only takes one time for a plant to get too dry in order to damage it enough that it never recovers.

trackinsand, i have to say this I hate hawthorns, maybe they hate themselves and committed suicide, it's a thought. I would rather learn from what happens to me and go from there, and I have to admit we all get caught up in things and get carried away. Dp, I'm sorry it's only a plant. Sorry If I angered you. Trackinsand, I still hate hawthorns sorry.haha

I apologize if you misunderstood me--I never said you were advocating not loosening up the roots (in fact I believe I mentioned that was probably one thing we could all agree on!) As I was following the discussion, I saw the potential for someone reading this to become confused and think that there was no need to loosen up the roots if they're going to grow fine anyway once the plant's in the ground, so I wanted to make the point that there's no reason to take chances on that.

kitten, when I sound angry, I'm just trying to make myself understood. Sometimes on these threads it seems like there's a contest to have the last word and to be "right." Horticulture is part art and part science. Ideally it's science, but what is fact today may not be fact tomorrow.
Most basic tenents are unlikely to change, but in practical application, recommendations by the experts at leading universities with highly respected schools of horticulture evolve over the years. An example would be the size hole to dig to plant a tree. Anyway, you're nice to apologize, but you didn't make me angry, nor did anyone else. Sorry you hate hawthorns-
we all have plants we love and those we would just as soon never see again. Actually, hawthorns are overused where I live, and there is a fungal disease that is decimating red-tip photinias and is spreading to hawthorns, so we are likely to be seeing fewer and fewer of them. I like mine only when they are covered in those pink blooms for a couple of weeks in the spring. Happy gardening! Be sure to take a fork or something and comb those roots before you plant anything that comes in a container!!!

ecrane, I started by saying you are a treasure RE Dave's, and I stand by that.

i hate hawthornes too. the fungal disease is here in florida also and is taking its toll on them.

yes, dp, something else could have happened to them. i'm not here to argue.

do you agree that they could have committed suicide?

they didn't leave a note so it's anyones guess.

i bet they did have a note and then hide it in their roots just to screw with you!

None of my suicidal plants have ever left me a note. Wait...does that mean maybe it wasn't suicide? LOL

with apologies to youngman for taking this thread to varying degrees of an off-topic nature, let me say that it was a very interesting discussion and thank you for starting it. this is how we all learn and that's the main reason that most of us are here, to expand our garden knowledge.

i did find a tiny little pencil in the dirt.

see i told you so! ecrane3 if you look just a little harder you'll find a post it note laying somewhere. The plants just forgot where they put the note before taking their own lives...pause for a moment of silence...ok enough of that out with the old and in with the new!!!!!!!!!!!!!